Quick Oscar Ceremony Review

It's well past the three hour mark of the 85th Academy Awards Ceremony, and host Seth McFarlane goes out on stage to grandly pronounce that the next presenter, Meryl Streep, needs no introduction - and then promptly leaves without another word. That pretty much encapsulates how McFarlane's whole stint as Oscar host went last night. Yes, it was a little ruder and cruder than the awards circuit was used to, but at the same time the humor was so clever and self-reflective in an entertaining way, you had to give him credit.

After years of mediocre hosts, this time the most unlikely choice turned out to be the right one. Seth McFarlane proved to be a great emcee, singing and dancing and calling himself out on his own bad jokes all night. He even interrupted his own monologue with a surprise appearance by William Shatner as Captain Kirk, who claimed he had come back from the future to save the Oscars from McFarlane's poor hosting. While I don't think every joke landed and there were a few in pretty poor taste, at least McFarland managed to keep things exciting, and he was a real asset every time he appeared. At least the really egregious material, like the "We Saw Your Boobs" song number, and the Kardashian burn were framed in such a way that it was clear McFarlane understood exactly what he was doing. And he was charming and engaging enough to get away with it. It wasn't all snark, though. McFarlane pulled off an extended "The Sound of Music" joke in his intro for Christopher Plummer that was oddly sweet.

This wasn't one of the longer ceremonies, but it was still a pretty hefty one. The theme of this year's awards was to salute movie music, so not only were three of the Best Song nominees performed, but we also got a medley of musical numbers from Oscar favorites of the last decade, plus Barbara Streisand singing "The Way We Were" as an extra tribute to Marvin Hamlisch after the In Memoriam segment. You could have also spent all evening playing Name That Tune with the various movie tunes that were played throughout the evening, like "Cinema Paradiso" for the Best Foreign Film category or the orchestra cutting off the poor VFX winners with the "Jaws" theme. And the In Memoriam was backed by John Barry's "Out of Africa" score. That was a nice touch, as we lost Barry last year, but his music was noticeably missing from the prior ceremony. Unfortunately, in a questionable first, the live orchestra was revealed to be playing from a different building up the street.

Speaking of the VFX winners, one of the biggest stories of the night was that there was hardly any mention of the more than 400 visual effects artists who were protesting at this year's Oscar ceremony. "Life of Pi" has made over half a million dollars at the box office, but the primary effects house responsible, Rhythm and Hues, has just declared bankruptcy in part due to the industry's cutthroat business practices. So when "Life of Pi" won Best Visual Effects and the team was cut off while trying to give their fellow artists a supportive shout-out, it became a pretty sinister moment. Hopefully it'll get the issue more coverage.

As for the awards themselves, the early win of Christoph Waltz for Best Supporting Actor got my hopes up that there would be more surprises this year. Alas, that didn't happen. The rest of the expected actors won, and "Argo" took home Best Picture. However, there were a few upsets, the biggest being Ang Lee snagging Best Director for "Life of Pi." There was also a very unusual tie, in Best Sound Editing, between "Skyfall" and "Zero Dark Thirty." The awards were also spread out pretty evenly among the various big contenders, so there was at least a little suspense about who would go home with the Best Picture win.

In the end it was a night of many little disappointments and nice surprises. The much promoted tribute to 50 years of James Bond turned out to be just a clip montage followed by a performance of "Goldfinger" by Shirley Bassey. But then we got Seth McFarlane and Kristen Chenowith singing a biting tribute to the Oscar losers to close out the ceremony as the credits rolled. Best Animated Short and Feature got saddled with the worst presenters of the night, Melissa McCarthy and Paul Rudd. However, the hysterical segments with Mark Wahlberg and Ted later on in the evening restored the good name of animation.

And someone had Russell Crowe's microphone turned up a little too high, but Crowe was a acquitting himself pretty well in the vocal department last night. And Jennifer Lawrence beat out everyone who I'd have preferred to see win a Best Actress Oscar, but she gave one of the most level headed Oscar speeches I've ever heard out of an actress, and even told everyone to sit down, insisting they were only giving her a standing ovation because she'd tripped on the stairs. And it was nice to see Streisand and Bassey and Catherine Zeta Jones and Jennifer Hudson.

And the appearance of Michelle Obama was a very nice surprise.

So all in all, not the best Oscars, but far from the worst. Better than the last two years at least, I'd say. And I'd be happy to have Seth McFarlane back for another round in 2014.
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